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jlf1961 -> Lets Yell Wolf (2/16/2010 9:05:29 PM)
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In another thread, a person posted 3 articles to prove that the powers that be have predicted another 9/11 type attack or worse.
Curious, I checked them out, and found that they are a bit outdated, and actually, only one is concerned with a terrorist type attack. One deals with the threat of a nuclear strike from North Korea, one is an essay dealing with the fact that Seattle opted out of the FEMA nuclear attack preparedness plan.
From The Belfer Center, for Science and International Affairs
Seattle Vulnerable to Nuclear Terrorism
Op-Ed, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
September 21, 2004
quote:
Seattle was baptized into the era of terrorism in December 1999 when a customs agent became suspicious of a driver disembarking from a ferry at Port Angeles. Her gut reaction proved correct: Ahmed Ressam was smuggling more than 100 pounds of explosives for al-Qaida's millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Seattle moved into the center of the cross hairs when the mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, put the Northwest's tallest building on his top 10 target list. Later, U.S. forces found photos of the Space Needle in an al-Qaida hideout in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden has challenged the greater al-Qaida movement to trump 9/11. The list of terrorist actions reaching that bar is short. A clue to the preferred method comes from bin Laden: He declared obtaining nuclear weapons "a religious duty."
Full article
From Press TV, Seattle warned of 'imminent' nuke attack
Sat, 06 Jun 2009
quote:
A US congressman has raised doubts over the country's capability to intercept long-range trans-Pacific strategic missiles once fired from 'rogue regimes'.
Missouri Congressman Todd Akin has warned about a looming nuclear threat on the US's West coast as adversarial regimes such as North Korea expand their nuclear and rocket launching capacities.
The 62-year-old Republican Congress member recently wrote his personal assessment of current nuclear issues threatening US security in which he demands a fortified scheme to tackle potential problems.
Full Article
And finally, Seattle backs out of planning for nuclear war in July 1982.
quote:
In July 1982, Mayor Charles Royer withdraws Seattle from planning for nuclear war. Royer calls Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) plans to evacuate the population of Seattle to east of the Cascades in the event of a nuclear attack "virtually useless" and states that Seattle should not "lend credence to the dangerous idea that a nuclear war is a manageable emergency" (The Seattle Times). Royer's action follows a similar policy statement by King County Executive Randy Ravelle.
Full Article
Now the common thread in all these articles deals with a nuclear device or attack, and granted since the fall of the soviet union, there are probably more weapons unaccounted for then you can probably guess. The fact of the matter is that all these weapons are warheads, designed to be RADAR detonated and would need an engineer with knowledge of nuclear weapons in order to make them portable and command detonated.
Now for those who claim that something called a micro nuke could be used, I would like to point out that the smallest nuclear device ever built was called the Davy Crocket, a recoilless rifle round. The Mk-54 weighed about 51 lb (23 kg), with a selectable yield equivalent to 10 or 20 tons of TNT (very close to the minimum practical size and yield for a fission warhead). The complete round weighed 76 lb (34.5 kg). It was 31 in. (78.7 cm) long with a diameter of 11 in. (28 cm) at its widest point; a subcaliber piston at the back of the shell was actually inserted into the launcher's barrel for firing. This weapon was a fission device and very dirty, dangerous to those who fired it as well as the target.
The smallest nuclear bomb presently in existence is the warhead for the Mk-61 bomb. It is 10 feet 10 and 3/4 inches long and weighs 716 pounds. It is called a dial-yield warhead with the explosive yield able to be set at .3/ 1.5/ 60/ 170 Kilotons, depending on the weapon settings.
While it is theoretically possible to make a thermonuclear warhead smaller, the problem is the size of the trigger which is a fission warhead, or specially designed shaped charges of common high explosives to initiate compression, which in and of themselves would be large. A nuclear trigger could be used, but they are fission bombs and produce a lot of dirty fallout. (In other words, if a micro nuke, a.e nuclear trigger, was used at the WTC, Lower Manhatten would be a very HOT place to be)
Now, in the process of googling terrorist attack predictions I found a few blogs, psychic predictions, a warning by Pat Robertson for 07. Currently, there are no official predictions, warnings, or threat assessments for the United States, which does not rule out the lone fanatic suicide bomber.
I am not denying the fact that there could be some intel somewhere that is pointing to another big strike, just saying that whoever is making such predictions are in good company for being wrong.
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